Nordic Tech Webinar: How Zephyr became the leading open-source RTOS for IoT

Jul
2025

Webinar

Zephyr RTOS has rapidly grown into the most widely adopted open-source real-time operating system for secure, connected, and low-power embedded devices. Hosted by the Linux Foundation and backed by a vibrant community of contributors, Zephyr offers much more than an RTOS kernel—it’s a comprehensive, modular, portable, and scalable ecosystem trusted by thousands of developers around the world.

One of the earliest adopters and the top contributor to Zephyr, Nordic Semiconductor recognized the project’s potential back in 2016 and made the strategic decision to adopt it as the foundation for its nRF Connect SDK. That decision has enabled Nordic to deliver robust, production-grade software offerings across a wide portfolio of wireless SoCs, helping developers bring innovative wireless products to market faster.

Join Kate Stewart from the Linux Foundation along with Carles Cufi and Ali Aljaani for a behind-the-scenes look at Zephyr’s evolution, its growing role as an industry standard, and how Nordic contributes to the open-source community.

Agenda:

Is Zephyr just an RTOS? Understand how Zephyr is an ecosystem with drivers, protocols, middleware, tools, and security—all maintained under one cohesive project.
Zephyr 2016 vs. Today: Explore Zephyr’s major milestones, technical evolution, and its unprecedented adoption growth.
Why Nordic Chose Zephyr: Learn what sets Zephyr apart from other RTOS options and why Nordic decided to go all-in with Zephyr.
Inside nRF Connect SDK: See how Nordic built a complete SDK around Zephyr, integrating additional networking protocols, tools, and libraries to support its hardware platforms.
Nordic’s Contributions to Zephyr: Did you know that roughly a quarter of the contributions to Zephyr came from Nordic? Discover key contributions by Nordic to Zephyr—from the Bluetooth LE controller and USB stack to west tool, DFU frameworks, and more.
Getting Started with Zephyr-based software development: Access tools and resources to accelerate your development/onboarding journey—like nRF Connect for VS Code, Nordic Developer Academy, and more.